MADE 4 U

State looks to add more customized license plates

ATLANTA - If you're a Bill Elliott fan in Georgia, you can show your support on a T-shirt. If you want to memorialize Dale Earnhardt, you can get a No. 3 sticker for your window.

But if you want to tout NASCAR everywhere you drive, state legislators are here to help you.

Despite the long list of policy issues the General Assembly tackles every year, lawmakers typically find time to introduce a couple of new designs for licenses plates, and this session is no different.

On Thursday, Sen. Chip Rogers, R-Woodstock, announced that he will introduce legislation to offer 38 new tags, each featuring a different NASCAR driver.

Rogers got the idea from a constituent who e-mailed him after seeing similar plates in Mississippi.

"This is going to be the hottest ticket in town," Rogers said while showing off the sample design for the racing plates, which eight other states also issue.

Because specialty plates often require a manufacturing fee of $20 or $25 and an annual extra charge for renewal, the state or a sponsoring group can see an extra boost of revenue from drivers who want more than the standard peach on an aluminum plate.

For example, Rogers said he expects that if the NASCAR plates are approved, they could bring in at least $1 million in their first year and between $6 million and $8 million in five years.

He chose the Governor's Office of Highway Safety as the beneficiary for a portion of the money made from selling NASCAR tags.

Georgia drivers first started personalizing their car bumpers decades ago when they were given the right to cram their own numbers and letters into abbreviated calling cards and take them on the highway.

"The first prestige tags were in 1969, and it went on from there," said Georgia Department of Motor Vehicle Safety spokeswoman Susan Sports.

The state now offers about 70 plates recognizing Georgia colleges, military service, hobbies and causes.

New York offers more than 230 custom plates to satisfy almost any sports fan, profession or hometown in the state. Jimmy Buffet fans in Virginia have their own license plates, and Alabama has offered an "Atomic Nuked Veteran" for retired military personnel who were exposed to radiation.

Georgia's menu includes the top-selling wildlife tag, which had more than 366,000 on the road last year, said Sports.

There are also niche choices for those who qualify, such as the "Hobby Antique" tag for vehicles more than 25 years old and an "Amateur Radio" plate for those who hold an amateur radio license from the Federal Communications Commission.

But not every idea makes the cut.

Sports said that recent suggestions to commemorate square and round dancers, the Rotary International civic group and Civil War battlefields and historic sites failed to reach their necessary pre-orders outlined in their legislation.

Specialty plates can either be created through state law or if a sponsoring group can rally 1,000 people willing to buy them.

This legislative session, lawmakers already have filed bills for a plate recognizing libraries, police wounded in the line of duty and the return of the controversial "Choose Life."

That plate, which legislators have pitched several times before, has run into problems in other states because of its anti-abortion implication.

South Carolina approved the same plate only to see it barred by the courts because pro-choice groups were not allowed to express their message the same way.